


Twist and Change

by patrokla



Series: born a girl [1]
Category: Manic Street Preachers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Injury, Multi, Pre-Relationship, pre-fame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 02:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7489194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/patrokla/pseuds/patrokla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“James and I have written a song,” Nicky announces, bursting into Richey’s bedroom in a flurry of sugar-water spikes and footie gear.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>or; at the age of sixteen, Nicky Jones, captain of the girl's football team, is encountering a few problems.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twist and Change

**Author's Note:**

> If you got here by searching for yourself or someone you know, please, click the back button immediately. 
> 
> I've been telling myself for a while that I wasn't going to write Manics RPF, because writing about a real person who may or may not be dead feels like it crosses some ethical boundaries. Ultimately, however, I'm trash, so a few days ago I started this fic, and today I finished it. It's not the communist lesbian nicky/richey fic I want to write at some point, but it is...something.
> 
> The title is from Born a Girl, because of course. 
> 
> Warnings for: swearing, misogyny, a serious lack of knowledge about Wales/the Manics in the early 80s, Americanisms, and a lot of hairspray.

At the age of sixteen, Nicky Jones is not, objectively speaking, an attractive girl. She’s too tall, too lanky, face too broad, some mix of boy/girl that’s left her with unremarkable features from both sides of the spectrum.

That’s what Milligan, the boy’s football team captain says, anyway, after she leads the girl’s team to a victory that leaves his team smashed into the dust, and she can’t stop grinning in his face, ache in her knees be damned.

More accurately, he says something more along the lines of ‘an ugly cunt like you couldn’t get laid if you paid for it’ etc etc. She’s been told similar things before by her peers. Frequently.

She distantly hears Rachel telling him to ‘fuck off, Ella said she dumped you because you’re shit in bed’, but Nicky is still grinning, high on the victory. It wasn’t an official match, the school never lets them have official matches, but the unofficial after-school scuffles in the pre-season are still enough to sate her. For now.

She’s still smiling when she leaves the field with the girls, reveling in the bitter looks aimed her way.

\---

Nicky’s mum is about the most understanding, patient mother in all of Wales, as far as Nicky is concerned.

When Nicky lopped off most of her hair at the age of six with a pair of kitchen scissors, her mum had cut the bits she missed and convinced her dad it wasn’t the travesty it appeared to be. When Nicky stayed out late playing football in the street with James and Sean from next door, her mum stocked up on plasters and kept dinner warm. 

And when Nicky brought over Richey, a small boy who smelled very strongly of hairspray and kept eyeliner in his schoolbag, Nicky’s mum had opened a window, smiled, and let the two of them sit in front of her vanity and faff around with her makeup for hours and hours.

So the look of horror on her face is unusual, Nicky thinks. Potentially worrying.

“Nicky,” her mum says, and then seems to be out of words.

“Nicky,” she tries again, “blonde?”

Nicky stands there in the kitchen, fingering the bleached fringe of her hair, a bit self-conscious. 

“Richey did it, isn’t it brilliant?”

“It’s something,” her mother says, and then, sighing, “well, I suppose it can’t be undone.”

“Not really,” Nicky says.

And that is that. Until her dad comes home, of course.

\---

“James and I have written a song,” Nicky announces, bursting into Richey’s bedroom in a flurry of sugar-water spikes and footie gear.

“Oh,” Richey says, looking up from one of his endless books - _Das Kapital_ , probably - to raise an eyebrow at Nicky.

“Yes, _oh_ , you git. A song! We’re going to start a band, yeah, because he got a guitar for his birthday and we both know some chords, and he can sing, and it’s a great song, Richey, about the miners, and we’re in a band!”

Nicky flops down on the floor, heart racing from running to Richey’s, and from the excitement of the afternoon.

“We’ll be like the Clash,” she says, “and sell a million records.”

“The Clash had more than two people in it,” Richey observes, going back to his book.

“Then we’ll get more people! Someone to play drums, and bass, and I’ll write the lyrics for the songs - it was mostly my idea, did I mention?”

“You did,” Richey says flatly, but he rolls off the bed and settles next to Nicky, his hair brushing against her face.

“What’s it called?”

“The song? Aftermath, we argued over a name for ages but James came up with that one and it fit better. I was all for calling it The Killing Fields, but I know when to quit…”

“You do _not_ ,” Richey says, “that’s an utter lie.” 

“Well, maybe a bit,” Nicky acknowledges. “But you know how James is when he thinks he’s got the best idea.”

“Mhm, like a dog with a bone,” Richey says.

Then he sighs.

“What’s wrong, Teddy Edwards?”

“Nothing, just. Mam’s on me about uni, and A levels, and acting like it’s all so soon,” Richey says, and Nicky can tell that he’s frowning.

“It is soon, though, for you,” Nicky says, curling towards him so she can press her face against his shoulder. “It’s your last year here.”

“Not if I fail everything, it’s not,” he says, stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.

“Please, like you could bear to fail a test. You couldn’t, it’d be going against your DNA or something. And you want to go to uni! You’re always talking about how dull it is here, and how you can’t wait to find other people who like poetry and hate capitalism who you haven’t known your whole life.”

“That’s true,” Richey says, sounding a bit less unhappy. “I’m just - nervous. About finding the right place, and doing well in my courses. And leaving here.”

“Nervous, excited, same difference,” Nicky says airily, like she doesn’t have the same nervousness in the pit of her stomach, though whether it’s about Richey leaving or her own future she couldn’t rightly say.

“And Blackwood will always be here,” she adds, “you’ll be pleased to be shed of it, we all will.”

Richey doesn't say anything, so she rubs her nose against his arm, laughing when he pulls away.

“It’ll all work out in the end, Rich,” she says after a moment. “Me and James will be famous, and you’ll be some sort of professor, and Sean will probably be in an orchestra or something. But we’ll all do well, I know it.”

“And we’ll all leave Blackwood and never return,” Richey says, making her smile. “Now tell me how your song goes…”

\---

“Milligan was talking about how he’d hit you if you weren’t a girl,” Sean announces the next day during lunch.

“He can’t even kick the ball when it’s lying still on the ground, I dunno how he expects to hit me,” Nicky says, rolling her eyes. “For the captain of the footie team he’s a bit shit at actually playing.”

“The _boy’s_ football team,” Richey says, poking her. “You’re a captain too.”

“Right, I nearly forgot about that for a minute,” James says dryly. “Except, no, I hadn’t, because the two of you never shut up about it.”

“It’s true,” Sean adds, and Nicky kicks him under the table.

“Fuck off, it is,” he says, glaring at her.

“The only people who talk about it more than you and Rich is Milligan,” James says, smirking. “He’s a bit obsessed with you, Nicky.”

“He’s a bit of a fuckwit, is what he is,” Nicky says, and she goes back to chewing some unidentifiable veg very loudly, just to make Sean look grumpier than he usually does.

\---

“James has a point about Milligan,” Richey says, as they walk to his house after school that day.

“Which is?”

“He does seem obsessed with you. I think he _like-likes_ you,” Richey says derisively.

“So what if he does? He can like me, love me, or hate me, but it’s not going to make him any less of an unpalatable idiot,” Nicky says, annoyed that they’re on this again. “Anyways, no one likes me, it’s part of my charm.”

“I’m not sure that charm is the word for it,” Richey says, but he looks slightly relieved, and that’s even more irritating than Milligan is. 

“Richey, please tell me you don’t think I’m going to run into the arms of the first person who pays me the slightest bit of attention,” Nicky says, narrowing her eyes at him when he doesn’t respond.

“It’s not that,” he says after a moment, “I just. I don’t know how to say it. I worry sometimes, I guess.” 

“About what?” 

“I don’t know,” he says. “I just do.”

\---

Nicky is the tallest of the four of them, although James swears that he’ll be taller than all of them in a few years.

“You just wait ‘til I start growing again,” he says, which is always a cue for a mad scramble to the nearest piece of furniture to stand on, so one of them can be taller than James.

Usually it devolves into a dogpile on the floor, limbs tangled up, Sean inevitably trying to put someone in a chokehold, and all of them mussed and content. Richey’s dad had walked in on one once and walked straight out again, shaking his head. 

Even in the midst of the dogpile, though, Nicky secretly hopes that James does grown ten inches in the next year and become the tallest of them all. Or Richey, or even Sean - just so long as it isn’t her. She’s tired of being the strange, wiry one. It’s time for it to be someone else’s turn.

\---

“Why don’t you and Richey ever go out with your makeup on? Nicky?”

Nicky flails upright, nearly hitting Richey in the face as she turns to face Sean, who’s looking at her curiously.

“I wasn’t asleep,” she says, even as she tries to discreetly get the sleep out of her eyes.

“Sure,” says Sean, because it’s easier to humour her than point out that she’s got a massive red line across one cheek where it’d been pressed against _A History of Welsh Literature_.

“I was up late last night,” Nicky says, running a hand through slightly greasy hair. 

“Studying,” she adds, ignoring James rolling his eyes.

It’s a lie, she couldn’t sleep because her knees ached, but she doesn’t want to say that out loud, where anyone could overhear.

“You’re avoiding the question,” Sean says.

“Yes, well. I don’t know why we don’t, Sean. We just don’t,” she says, suddenly feeling very irritated.

“I wear eyeliner out, sometimes,” Richey says, glancing at her from under his stupidly long eyelashes. 

“So do I,” Nicky rejoins, “at weddings and such. Why the sudden interest, Sean? Want to learn how to slap it on?”

She’s distantly aware that she sounds bitter, and maybe she is. Maybe she’s tired of people asking her about makeup. Maybe she’s tired of these three idiots, these boys.

“I won’t ask if it bothers you,” Sean says, sounding surprisingly soft, genuine. “I was just wondering.”

“Well, don’t,” she says, but a few minutes later, after James and Richey start yet another discussion about the future of The Smiths, she kicks Sean gently under the table.

“Sorry,” she says, and doesn’t wait for a reply before putting her head back down on her textbook. 

“It’s alright,” Sean says, but as Nicky falls back asleep, she thinks that she’s not all that sure it is.

\---

James is quite good at guitar, and normally Nicky is proud of that, but she’s been fumbling with F Major for the last thirty minutes and his constant advice and correction is getting quite irritating.

“No, like _this_ ,” James says, pulling at the guitar neck to show Nicky for the thousandth time.

Nicky keeps a firm hold on it, moving away from him and curling over the guitar.

“I _know_ ,” she says, glaring at him. “I just - it’s the pressure, I just need to press down on the fret more. I get it, James.”

“Alright,” he says after a moment. “Maybe we should take a break? We’ve been playing for ages, I’m hungry. I bet Mam would make us lunch.”

“Sure,” Nicky says, still bent over the guitar.

“I’ll go ask her,” James says, and she can feel him look at her before he leaves the room.

She presses her forefinger down along the fret, ignoring her fingers’ complaints about the new position. She can hear Sean playing trumpet through the wall. He’s good.

James is good.

She wants to be good. It feels like - like she’s not good at anything. Not anything that counts. She’s only written one song, for fuck’s sake. She’s not exactly band material.

“Mam says that we- are you okay, Nicky?”

James stops in the doorway, and when she looks up at him he’s blurry.

“Shit,” she says, dropping the guitar to wipe her eyes with the palms of her hands, dragging away the moisture along rough skin. 

“You weren’t crying, were you, Nick?” James looks horrified at the prospect, looks like he wants to go back to his mum and ask her what to do.

“No,” she lies, “no, I’m. My fingers are sore.”

“Right,” James says with obvious relief. “Mine hurt for months when I first started playing, it was awful. You’ve got to build the callouses up, ‘specially for the barre chords.”

Nicky nods, wiping her eyes again and pushing herself to her feet.

“So, lunch?”

“It’s only leftovers,” James says, “but better than nothing. Mam says she’s got better things to do than cook for us. She called us layabouts, can you believe that?”

“I’m a runabout, if I’m anything,” Nicky says distantly, relieved when James laughs.

“That makes Sean a wankabout, then,” James says, and the trumpet playing is briefly interrupted by Sean opening his door to stick two fingers out at them.

Back to normal, then.

\---

It’s Sunday afternoon and Richey is doing his hair.

“I’ve got to open a window,” Nicky says, coughing as the hairspray fumes swirl around the small bathroom. “This is too much, Rich, I dunno how you can stand it.”

“Years of practice,” Richey says, not taking his eyes off the mirror, where he’s teasing his hair into some sort of beehive-like monstrosity.

“Years of poisoning yourself, more like,” Nicky mutters, pulling at the window latch futilely. “I thought I fixed this last year?”

“You broke it,” Richey corrects, “Dad painted it shut or something, I dunno.”

“Ugh,” Nicky says, returning to her seat on the edge of the bath behind Richey.

Richey hums neutrally, reaching out a hand so Nicky can hand him a comb.

“Richey,” Nicky says a few minutes later, after she’s grown bored of kicking her heels against the porcelain, “what do you want to do? Y’know, when you grow up?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“A perfectly valid one! You’ve got uni coming up, and decent marks - you could probably go a lot of places. Do a lot of things. So what do you want to do?” 

“Move to Mars,” Richey says dryly, turning to face her. “What do you want to do?”

“Well, footie’s not really an option,” she says, looking down at the tile.

“Why not? Wales has a national women’s team now, and you’d definitely make it,” Richey interjects. “I’m sure that the pay is rubbish compared to _men’s football_ ,” he says, voice going low and mocking, “but if you want to play, you should. You’re brilliant, Nicky, you could do it if you wanted.”

“Gosh, thanks, Rich,” she says, looking up at him, voice trying for sarcasm but coming out closer to fondness. “I - can’t, though, actually. It’s my knees. And my back. Mum made me go to a doctor, a few months ago, and it’s - you know when Milligan tackled me last year and my knee swelled up? I guess something happened to the cartilage, I dunno. But I won’t be able to play for more than a few more years, if I keep on with it. The doctor said I should stop at the end of this year if I want to be able to walk normally on it. So. No more football. Not for me.”

She looks up at Richey, worried at his silence, and finds him looking at her. His wide, dark eyes are inscrutable.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” he asks, and she looks down again, throat growing tight.

“I guess I wanted to pretend it wasn’t happening,” she says, “wanted a few more months with everything normal. But it hurts all the time, Richey, and I-” 

Her voice breaks, and she takes a long, shuddering breath.

“I don’t have anything without this,” she whispers. “It’s all I’m really good at, and without it I’m just a - a tall, plain girl who used to play footie.” 

_Ugly cunt,_ she hears Milligan shouting, somewhere in the back of her head.

“You aren’t,” Richey says, and he sounds angry, he sounds angrier than she’s heard him in years. “You are _not_ , Nicky, you’re fucking fantastic. You’ve got the best marks in your year, and you’ve written a song, and you’ve got the best smile of anyone in Wales. You’re brilliant, Nicky Jones. With or without football. You’re a fucking wonder.” 

“Jesus, Richey,” Nicky says, shocked into laughing. “Save something for the next time I'm in crisis, won’t you?”

“I’ve got a lot more,” Richey says seriously.

“Yeah, alright,” Nicky says, “You’ve convinced me, I’m the best thing to happen to this country since King Arthur.”

“You’re better than King Arthur,” Richey says, and when he stands to pull her into a hug she goes easily.

“You’ve got three mates who will kick Milligan into next Sunday,” he says fiercely, and she wants to laugh, at the image, at the fact that Richey’s short enough to have to say it into her shoulder. 

But she doesn’t laugh. Instead, she wraps her arms tighter around him, lets herself revel in the familiar warmth for a few moments.

“Alright, get off before I choke on the fumes,” she says, but she knows Richey can hear the smile in her voice as she says it.

“So dramatic,” Richey says, and he’s smiling too as he turns back to the mirror.

Nicky’s knee still aches, but somehow, despite the hairspray, her head feels a little lighter.


End file.
